Il selvaggio deserto del pensiero. Considerazioni su sacro e civiltà ne La nascita della tragedia

The paper addresses the complex conflict among the categories of Sacred, Kultur, and Civilization (respectively associated with the Dionysian, Apollonian and Socratic) in the account of Die Geburt der Tragödie, and sketches some lines of young Nietzsche’s radical critique of modern Western civilization. It also detects the Lutheran root of Nietzsche’s thought as the element that links the tragic Dionysian to modern times and emphasizes the importance of poetic imagination in the attempt to rebuild the sacred dimension in the time of its total removal.